


Of Years Gone By

by Alley_Skywalker



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Gen, master-padawan relationship, padawan choosing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-05-25
Updated: 2006-05-25
Packaged: 2018-01-26 11:20:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,707
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1686494
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Alley_Skywalker/pseuds/Alley_Skywalker
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Not all Master-Padawan bonds are strong.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Of Years Gone By

The young knight stood silently in the corner of the training room, not wanting to be noticed. She didn’t wish to disturb the younglings. Or so she told herself. In fact the one person she wanted to avoid the most was the one who had probably sensed her anyways. The one strutting through the strait lines of young initiates doing a series of Si Cho aimed katas. 

She watched as they performed the combinations in almost perfect synchrony. A synchrony that was born out of working together for several hours a day. Not simply from perfection of memorization. Their timing was their own in a way. A timing agreed on by the group. If you were to line up the top padawans of the order all you would get would be disciplined synchrony of timing. 

Three steps to the right, fifty centimeters each, one half second per step, pause one half second before making the next step. It was drilled. It was memorized and disciplined. It was synchrony. Not harmony. There was too much purity and innocence in harmony. Those qualities were lost with the padawan vows. Hers had been, at any rate.

*****************

The last crease was made and the band was snapped over the end of the braid, a long strand of hair falling loosely over her chest. There was a brief hum of a lightsaber and a flash of green light before the loose end was severed, leaving the braid short and neat.

The knight before her stood and handed her a lightsaber hilt, the standard Level 4 training saber. They bowed to each other and faced Master Yoda to hear the customary speech that each new master/padawan team received. 

The young girl’s head was spinning slightly. She was a padawan now. Sasha Paumry was a padawan. A padawan to a master that she had waned to study under. She had always hung on his every word during combat training sessions. She was now his padawan! This would be amazing she was sure of it! They would make the best master padawan team in the Order!

*****************

It had been a naïve hope. A dream of a child who looked up to a teacher. Truly the initiates often times knew very little of the knights that chose them. And sadly it was frequently vice versa as well. 

But where the padawans were always eager to please, hero worshiping their masters from day one if for no other reason than because these were the mentors who would make their dreams come true and were everything they aspired to be, the knights were often utterly and bitterly disappointed. 

Sasha smiled sadly to herself as she watched the class of initiates dismiss and all of the hopeful young children scatter out of the training room. One boy was called aside, however. A quite child with black hair highlighted with green and dark wide eyes that were too serious for someone so young. She realized then that this was the child that seemed to be having the most trouble with the katas. 

“You need to concentrate more, Galahen.” It was sharp, poignant, and a tone that Sasha remembered all too well…

*****************

“You need to concentrate, Padawan.”

“I am, Master. I’m trying,” Sasha said honestly, staring up at her mentor with large dark eyes, wondering what she would receive for her honesty.

“If you are going to be a knight you can’t slack off on your training.”

The young padawan blinked several times in order to avoid tears that threatened to well up in her eyes. It simply wasn’t fare! She was trying. Was trying very hard actually. Bu it was almost never good enough. “But I don’t slack off, Master!” She cried, pleading for understanding, “I even train overtime and-“

”Don’t talk back to me, Padawan!”

She shrank away, the defiant part of her slinking off and leaving her vulnerable. She curled up inside, though she stood straight with her head slightly bowed. “Yes, Master. I’m sorry, Master.”

*****************

She watched the young boy shrink a bit under the ongoing reprimands but he stayed quite, taking everything in silently and with more dignity then most senior padawans could dream of. When master Roe Tassel finally left, without as much as a glance at her, Sasha approached the now almost sobbing child. 

*****************

Spin. Strike. Thrust. kick. Repeat. Block. 

The kata went on and on in a flurry of movement. She liked katas for this reason. That they went by in flashes, blurring the lines of time as the Force mingled with everything around her, bathing it in a glow that only she could see in that moment in time. It was an outlet of frustration. A way to release her most passionate feelings into the Force.

Sasha was an obedient and quite padawan. Not perfect by far but she wasn’t trouble. If bottling up anger at times was what it took she would do so. It was necessary when it came to her master. 

Never quite good enough. There was always someone else in the training room who could do better. She knew that that disappointed her master. Or was it only on occasion? She had tried to sense the reason of some of his disappointment through their bond but Tassel always shielded himself. 

She was too young to wonder over her relationship with her master much further than that. And it would take another few years for her to understand Tassel’s disappointment. 

For now it was just the kata. 

Punch. Reverse. Step back. Crescent kick. Spear hand. ‘Saber reverse and Thrust. Flip and block. 

*****************

She knelt before the boy, looking him straight in the eye and asked the pointed question. “Are you crying because of Maser Tassel, young one?”

The boy looked surprised but didn’t dare contradict someone so much higher in rank. He nodded, swiping away at stray tears. 

“What happened?”

“I can’t get the hand to hand kata.”

“He was rather mad just now. Are you sure that’s all that went wrong?”

Another shy nod. She didn’t doubt the boy’s honesty. “Why was he so mad?”

“He said I didn’t try hard enough. He said that if I was to become a knight I couldn’t slack off in my training. He said he didn’t appreciate padawans, or initiates for that matter, who couldn’t pull a simple kata.”

“He shouldn’t have said…uh I’m sorry I didn’t catch your name.”

“Galahan Edel, But you can call me Gal if you want, Master…er…”

“Sasha Paumry,” she offered. “He shouldn’t have said that to you, Gal.”

“Maybe he’s right. I’m twelve and a half and no master has chosen me so far.”

“You might just be waiting for the perfect match,” she said reassuringly, but she knew her words were empty. Twelve and a half was rather old. Few knights took on padawans who were so old. It was rare for a last moment save to occur. But the boy didn’t need to know that just yet. His dreams might be shattered in due time but she wasn’t going to take it upon herself to do that. 

“Which kata is it, Gal? Maybe I can help.”

“It’s In-Wa One, Master Paumry.”

She thought it over, remembering how the hand to hand combat kata flowed. She then turned to Gal and nudged him to the center of the floor. “So what’s the trouble here, young one?”

“I keep getting some of the moves mixed up or they end up lower or higher then they should be…” 

She smiled inwardly. She’d been there in her own initiate days. And Tassel’s tactic here was admirable at the least.

*****************

Tassel walked between the straight rows of initiates back the front of the class, al eyes following him. “Get in ready position everyone,” he ordered. 

The class fell into the ready stance with feet a shoulder width.

“Now imagine a battle. You’ve got a guy coming at you from the left. What do you do, Spenez?”

“Double knife hand block, Master.”

“Good. Now grab them by the head…elbow in the face. Step back…crescent kick them in the head. Side kick in the stomach. Elbow to the diaphragm.” 

Sasha followed the narrative, committing it to mind. Thing like these were important. They would prepare you for fighting one of these days. For now it was preparing her for her next sparring session. 

*****************

“Alright now you have two people coming at you. So what would you do?”

“Square block, Master Paumry?”

“Right. Now one’s at your left and the other’s in front. Now what?”

“Round Kick and Side kick?”

“If you do a round kick you’re leaving you side exposed so front kick and then side kick.”

They went through the movements like that again and again until Gal’s form matched hers. Timing, footwork, chambers… they perfected everything. She felt proud of the boy by the time they were done. Was this how it felt to be a new master, before you were disappointed in you young charge? And if it felt this good at first why did it change? Why did it go away? Were the expectations always that high?

She left the boy after a couple of hours of work and was about to leave the initiate wing when she sensed a presence behind her that made her stop dead.

*****************

The halls were almost empty by this time and Sasha had been making her way back to her quarters after meditating in the gardens when she felt her masters presents up ahead and around the corner. Not wanting to be caught she hid in the shadows of a narrow adjoining corridor and shielded her presents. 

Roe Tassel appeared around the corner a moment later. He was speaking to another knight, on of his friends Sasha supposed, in a hushed tone but the padawan could still hear what they were saying as they stopped a few paces away from her hiding spot.

“All these years, Gaine, I’ve been watching him. I had known that boy had potential from the day I met him. Very talented,” Tassel was saying.

“Talent isn’t everything, Roe,” Gaine responded. “You have to look beyond medichlorines. There’s a reason why you choose who you choose.”

“I thought she had talent too, Gaine. The ‘saber tournament proved me very wrong.”

“Forty third out of several hundred padawans, a hundred of which are her age or older isn’t bad at all. Besides you know sparring was never her thing.”

“He got first though. And he’s only sixteen and a half. She’s eighteen.”

“Roe, you don’t have to be the maser of the best padawan in the Order. Jarson was beat by someone three years younger than him. Doesn’t mean I don’t care about him.”

“It’s not that I don’t care about her, Gaine. I’m just disappointed. I didn’t get what I was bargaining for.” 

Sasha curled up on herself, pulling up her shields tighter. She wasn’t suppose to be hearing this. She didn’t even WANT to hear this. Her failure in the ’saber tournament still stung even after a month. The lack of support from her master hurt even worse. 

“Let me ask you one question, Roe. Would you trade your padawan in for him if you had the chance tomorrow?”

Tassel sighed. “I heard such a switch could be traumatic for a padawan. But we are certainly a miss match. I won’t lie to you, Gaine. I made a mistake by taking her all those years ago and I regret it. I’m disappointed in what I got and disappointed in what I have. If I could I would make the switch.” With that the two Jedi moved on. 

Sasha felt numb and cold. Tassel’s words lingered in her mind.

_I’m disappointed in what I got and disappointed in what I have._

Disappointed in her.

Padawan Paumry slid down the wall of the shadowy corridor, curled up in a ball, and allowed herself to cry the tears that had been dammed up for so long.

*****************

She swirled around and came face to face with her former master. He towered almost a head and a half over her but she straitened her shoulders and looked him straight in the face, something she could never do as a padawan. 

“I see you’ve been working with Initiate Edel.”

She nodded curtly. “Yes, Master Tassel, I have. I figured he needed the extra help and I was willing to provide it. I am aware that you are his instructor but I am a knight and am quite capable of providing extra tutorials.”

“I am well aware of what you are allowed, Sasha.”

“It’s Knight Paumry if you please.” Her tone was crisp but she would not lower herself to go as low as to be rude.

Tassel looked like he couldn’t make up his mind to whether he should be embarrassed or outraged. So he changed the topic…slightly. “I see you’ve been coming around here lately, Sash- Knight Paumry. Do you plan to take a padawan?”

“In fact I do.”

“Who is the child then?”

“Please, Master Tassel, allow my padawan to be my personal business.” She turned to leave then but stopped and turned back. “But you can be assured that I will not be disappointed in her.” She didn’t wait for his response but left quickly, putting as much distance before herself and the past as she could. 

*****************

She stood there, feeling slightly stunned. Her hand went automatically to the place where her braid had been. It was strange to not have it anymore. Though so very liberating. 

Knightings were known to be bitter sweet moments for the master and the padawan alike. She was terrified but she felt free. No doubt her former master felt the same. She reached for the training bond and saw that Tassel had already split it in two. Strange how she hadn’t even felt it. The last blow was up to her to shatter the bond. She gathered her strength in the Force and crushed the pitiful remains of the bond. 

She was free now. They both were free.

Somehow the thought didn’t make her as happy as she thought it would. 

*****************

Padawan Choosing Day came around faster than Sasha had expected and before she knew it she was standing in the choosing chamber along with a bunch of other knights facing the sea of hopeful initiates. She had gone to the initiates’ wing several times after her confrontation with Tassel to watch the girl she considered her future padawan. She knew that she would love Korra no matter what but every time she was there the Force had been trying to tell her something. And she was afraid that Korra might not be the padawan for her. It was a scary thought for she had been so avid in her choice. But the Force kept pushing her in another direction which she had not quite identified. What she had learned above all was to listen to the Force. 

Master Kay started calling out initiate name after initiate name. Newly matched teams would go to her right and the unchosen initiates to her left. 

“Galahan Edel.”

The boy with whom she had worked a while ago came forward. No requests followed.

All of Sasha’s senses were suddenly alert as the Force stated swirling madly around her. She could feel it calling to her. She tried to shake off the feeling. This wasn’t right! Korra was to become her padawan not this boy she barely knew. 

And yet she was a Jedi and she followed the will of the Force. If the Force meant for her to be with Gal then let it be so. What other way did she have? 

Her eyes went to Korra. A moment of indecision swamped and stalled her. Would she be disappointed if she made this sudden choice? She couldn’t be sure…

“Initiate Edel you are dismissed.” Gal began walking toward the left wall of the chamber.

…But it was the will of the Force. And that was the best she could do. 

_“You might just be waiting for the perfect match.”_

“Wait! Master Kay,” Sasha stepped to the front of the group. “I request to take Gal as my Padawan Learner.”


End file.
